If you have yet to hear the term ‘micro-influencer,’ then you’re probably steering clear of the digital world. For industry insiders, micro-influencers are everywhere. Simply put, a micro-influencer is someone who has between 10,000 to 150,000 followers on Instagram, whereas a mid to top-tier influencer has over 150,000. Although a user’s amount of followers varies for each account, we are beginning to realize that this particular group of individuals has the ability to change the way brands work with influencers forever.
What it all comes down to is the audience. An A-List celebrity might have a large following, but it is important to consider why that audience visited the page in the first place. “Often times followers are only paying attention to the bigger picture, and not the product being advertised,” says Mark Lynn, co-founder and co-CEO of DSTLD. “You follow mostly because everyone you know also follows, not necessarily because you’re interested in his or her content.” Although there will always be a market for celebrity endorsements, brands have caught onto the fact that an influencer’s number of followers isn’t as important as we once thought.
According to Daniel Saynt, co-founder and CEO of Socialyte, “you’re going to see an increase in spend on the talents who drive results, not just the girls who are famous on Instagram.” Digital partnerships between brands and influencers have grown in popularity over the past few years, which has resulted in an inflated market where most companies can’t afford to pay a top influencer to promote their product. If a brand does manage to pull enough funds, the likelihood of keeping a longstanding relationship with the influencer is low solely because the ongoing price tag would be too much to handle. Therefore, these sponsored collaborations are more frequently being offered to micro-influencers as we shift our focus from fame and followers to engagement and audience.
Surprisingly, a micro-influencer with 50K followers can achieve higher engagement than that of an influencer with 1 million+ followers. “The high engagement and low costs for these campaigns help brands sell out of products and gain hundreds of new followers for a single activation,” says Daniel. Micro-influencers are in the unique position to work with brands, maintain scalable relationships with those brands, and produce better results than an influencer with twice the following can.
Not only do reoccurring activations appear more authentic, but they also create a sense of credibility for the influencer who continues to post about a particular brand, even if the content is obviously sponsored. “It’s much more effective to be a recognized, reoccurring brand featured on an influencer’s social channel. It demonstrates he or she really loves the product and isn’t just doing it for a paycheck,” Mark added. “The public is savvy. They know when a partnership isn’t organic, and that hurts both the brand’s and the talent’s credibility.” Not only are brands able to hire multiple micro-influencers for the price of one top-tier influencer, but the audience is more likely to believe a micro-influencer’s opinion because the partnership is organic.
Although the micro-influencer trend has taken over the digital industry as of recently, we need to remember that their future is still unclear. After all, the appeal of micro-influencers is that they have low social followings. But, what happens when they surpass the 150k mark? “At some point,” Mark added. “Micro-influencers will graduate to the next stage and make way for a new tier of micro-influencers. And at some point, the market will also say ‘enough.’” Until then, influencers will continue to diversify their brands by creating clothing lines, collaborating with brands, and increasing their social media presence, which ultimately opens the door for social media users to establish themselves as micro-influencers.
